Map's sourcing report

Where we source our cacao

You will notice harvests going back to 2015 when we made our first full-bag purchases. Moving forward into we are using some of these same origins, and will add any new ones as they are chosen. Please feel free to reach out with any questions mackenzie@mapchocolate.com

About the Belize beans: Maya Mountain Cacao (now a part of Uncommon Cacao) was founded in 2010 with the mission of improving Belizean farmer livelihoods by directly connecting smallholder farmers to the specialty chocolate industry. Within three years, MMC became the largest exporter in the country. Today, the company works with over 300 cacao farmers, most of them Q'eqchi' and Mopan Maya that speak their own languages in addition to English. MMC has grown farmer incomes by 20% and farmer children’s school attendance by 85%. Still, a staggering 69% of the local indigenous Maya community live at or below the regional poverty line. Cacao in this region is grown all organically. {info via Uncommon Cacao}

In 2012, Arif Khan of Cacao Fiji met several farmers on Fiji’s largest island, Viti Levu, who were “passionate about cocoa farming” but struggled to find markets for their products.Read a bit more of this Backstory: "The history of cacao in Fiji can be traced back to the 1880s when British colonizers first introduced the crop to the islands. A subtle relic of this colonial legacy remains on the country’s flag — the British lion pictured in the coat of arms holds a cacao pod in its paws.

The flow of Fijian cacao peaked at around 500 tons in 1987 and gave way to an ebb so deep the industry virtually died out. This crash occurred largely due to the fact that the government had monopolized the purchase and distribution of cacao in Fiji. When the country’s markets dried up in the midst of political unrest in the late 80s, the government simply stopped buying cacao from its nation’s farmers who were then left with no means by which to sell their beans. Cacao trees planted in the 1960s as part of a government effort populate the island still today, though many are left untended." {info source Medium, Conscious Cacao Stories}

After tasting a bar made of Fiji beans Arif Khan was inspired to move back to his home country and make it his mission to help revive Fiji’s cacao industry. Cacao Fiji Ltd began operations in the Fiji Islands in 2014. The company is involved in the farming, processing and exporting cocoa beans for craft chocolate, and places high emphasis on quality at every aspect of production. Cacao Fiji Ltd works with a network of cocoa farmers throughout the Fiji Islands. {info source Arif Khan}

Biosphere Cacao comes from the village of Wampusirpi, a location immediately adjacent to Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve in Honduras, which has been a World Heritage site and biosphere reserve since 1982. In 2011, UNESCO placed the reserve on the List of World Heritage. Cacao Direct went to Wampusirpi with the sole intention of re-starting cocoa production as a way to create a livelihood for native Hondurans in a drug trade-ravaged country. CD financed the construction of a fermentary, provided the farmers with the tools (solar-powered weed-whackers) necessary to reclaim the cacao trees growing in the rainforest there and sustainably harvest cacao, and provided oversight of the fermentation, transport, and marketing of the beans. Farmers are paid immediately at the time of delivering the raw/unfermented cacao, a step which required special dispensation by the Honduran government. Beans are organic certified. {info source Jorge Schmidt, Cacao Direct}

Marou Chocolate is based in Vietnam and works with 15-20 farmers who are cacao fermentors: five or six n Tien Giang, and 2 or 3 in each of the other 5 provinces where they source cacao. They pay nearly twice the market price (96,000 VND = 4,160 USD /t) at the farm, for top quality cacao, more than 3 times what African farmers get. Backstory: a wonderful recap of the history of cacao in Vietnam. {info source, Marou Chocolate}

Dominican Republic, Reserva Zorzal cacao

Cacao, wildlife conservation, and sustainable development unite at Reserva Zorzal (or the Bicknell’s Thrush Reserve, as it is known in English) — a 1,019 acre bird sanctuary and organic cacao demonstration farm in the northern mountain range of the Dominican Republic.

Bicknell’s Thrush (Zorzal de Bicknell) is a rare migratory songbird with a swirling, flute-like song. What it lacks in color, the thrush more than compensates in conservation value. By migrating annually between the Dominican Republic and North America, this endangered species establishes a conservation link across hemispheres. We work to strengthen that link by uniting farmers, governments, scientists, non-profits, chocolate producers and investors behind cacao production and habitat protection for the Bicknell’s Thrush in the tropics as well as in the United States and Canada. It turns out that chocolate, a culinary force in its own right, can also be a force for international conservation!

On Reserva Zorzal, they’ve set aside 70% of the land to be ‘forever wild," and is the Dominican Republic’s first private reserve as part of the National Protected Area System, establishing a model for private landowners to participate in landscape-level conservation. On the reserve, they are demonstrating to the world the abiity to produce some of the world’s finest cacao and safeguard while enhancing biodiversity. {info source, Zorzal Cacao

Sugar, cocoa butter, and milk powder

Organic cert cane sugar sourced from Native Organics, Brazil.

A vegan sugar, as Native, unlike other sugar producers, does not use bone char to bleach the sugar.

Native uses a global green sugarcane production and harvesting system called the Green Cane Project, initiated in 1987. Its main objective consists of a self-sustainable sugarcane production system, which seeks to perform the crop's entire ecological and conservationist potential.

The work included thousands of hours of research and major investments, including the development of a raw sugarcane harvester in collaboration with the manufacturer, area systematization for mechanized harvesting, sugarcane variety adjustments*, organic fertilizers, and soil phytosanitary treatment and preparation, among other actions.

From soil preparation for planting to industrial sugarcane processing, there was the integration of the most advanced technologies available and the human being's ancestral knowledge in the organic land stewardship. As a result, the São Francisco Sugarmill (UFRA) was granted the organic producer certificate in October 1997.

UFRA currently plants 12,500 hectares of land with sugarcane organically. To complement the Plant's organic raw material needs, over 7,500 hectares of 11 farms belonging to the Santo Antônio Plant were converted and certified. The current 20,000 hectares of certified sugarcane plantations are processed organically by the São Francisco Plant.

{info source: Native sustainability report}

Cocoa butter: pressed at Map directly from each origin.

Whole milk powder: certified organic, pasture-raised and grass-fed dairy from Humboldt Creamery; the creamery sources the milk from family farms, is organic cert, and utilizes a zero-waste initiative that has enabled HC to reduce the footprint of their manufacturing process, with over 98% of materials diverted from landfill in its Modesto production facility.